New IOP Director Betsy Fischer Martin to Pair Each Fellow With a Student Program

Harvard Institute of Politics Director Betsy Fischer Martin will pair each of the institute’s resident fellows with one of its student-run programs this semester, an early attempt to deepen the fellows’ involvement with undergraduates in her first months leading the IOP.

The arrangement gives fellows responsibilities beyond the liaison teams that have long anchored the program. Each fellow will serve as a mentor and resource to a separate IOP program and attend its meetings through the end of the semester.

“I really want to have our fellows even more engaged with the students,” Fischer Martin said in a Monday interview. “Not just with their seven-person liaison team, but across the IOP.”

“We’ve now matched up each fellow with another one of the IOP programs,” she added, “so that that fellow is going to be a mentor, a resource, an extra pair of ears, a person at their meetings.”

The institute has not yet completed the matching, IOP spokesperson Brigid O’Rourke said, and plans to announce the assignments “soon.”

Fischer Martin, a former executive producer of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” took over the IOP in mid-August. She succeeded interim co-directors Ned C. Price and Beth E. Myers, who had led the institute since the sudden death of director Setti Warren in November 2025.

She inherits a fellowship in its 60th year that more than 30 current and former IOP affiliates told The Crimson in May was badly in need of repair. Thirty-four former fellows said in interviews that many had lost touch with the institute after Eric R. Andersen, who ran the Fellows and Study Groups program for 14 years, left in 2017 — dissolving an informal network that had helped recruit fellows across ideological and professional lines.

Fischer Martin said she has already heard from former fellows that they want to be engaged, and that she received a wave of emails offering help after she was named director in June.

“There is this sense out there among former fellows that they want to be engaged, they want to be mentors to the students,” Fischer Martin said.

The change also reflects Fischer Martin’s own experience as an IOP fellow in fall 2023, when she said her interactions with students were the most fulfilling part of the experience. She said she enjoyed speaking with the IOP’s Women Initiative in Leadership program but did not connect with the group until her fellowship was nearly over.

“When I was here as a fellow, my background was in women in politics, and I loved talking to the Women in Leadership Group at the IOP. But I think I did it maybe two weeks before I left my fellowship,” Fischer Martin said. “I wish I had been a part of that community program the entire time I was here.”

The model is already in place for this semester’s cohort, which includes former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, former United Nations Ambassador Kelly D. Craft, former Arizona Governor Doug A. Ducey, former U.N. management ambassador Chris P. Lu, former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Nathalie Rayes, and author Chris C. Whipple.

Fischer Martin said the fellowship’s focus on students sets it apart from academic appointments elsewhere.

“They are not here to write a book, they are not here to publish an article and to do research and to be in the library,” she said. “They are here for the student experience, like full stop.”

The Fellows and Study Groups program has been a cornerstone of the IOP since the institute’s founding in 1966 as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy ’40. Each resident fellow leads right off-the-record study groups a semester, holds office hours, and speaks at IOP events while living in Cambridge.

“The word residential fellowship is real,” she said. “They are in residence this semester, and that’s what makes this fellowship incredibly unique.”

—Staff writer Jen L. Phan can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at jenphan.74. Follow her on X at @jenllphan.

—Staff writer Mirei S. Saneyoshi can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at mireisaneyoshi.09. Follow her on X at @mireisaneyoshi.